Comments on: Biodjinnetics

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 30 Jun 2014 14:52:55 +0000

>Are there actual respectable biologists (ie capable of getting themselves published) who will perform experiments for profit for what a private citizen would be able/willing to pay?

Yes: your money would go to the lab as a private grant, and that grant money would pay the salaries of the lab members & a portion would go to the university. There would be no moral or legal objections, so I’m sure w/ either enough money or a legitimately promising sounding idea you could get it done. A lot of grants for popular causes like cancer research are private – albeit usually generalized to make any cancer lab eligible. Private companies fund studies for products too – thats what the “conflict of interest” section on academic papers is for. It’s usually somewhat generalized though – like you might get a grant from a tomato company to study if tomatoes are good for you, but you probably wouldn’t have a public scientist studying the Voltion 3000 toothbrush or some other highly non-generalizable finding.

Scientists are always hungry for grant money and the professional incentive structure rewards those who acquire it. But you would need much more money to fund an obviously stupid project, since the incentive structure also rewards useful results.

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By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 17 Nov 2013 09:52:52 +0000

At what point does “eating something not recognized by the FDA” become “unlawful medical practice”? I’m fairly sure I’m allowed to have some, and I can probably tell my friends (and my blog) that “I had this and then my cancer disappeared”. Could I add “Coincidentally, I have several Torontonian two-toed toads; their venom looks really pretty when the sun catches it in a certain way. Does anybody want to buy any as a decoration? It should absolutely not be eaten.” while winking? Where is the line drawn, in general?

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By: FeepingCreature

FeepingCreature — Sat, 22 Jun 2013 00:48:27 +0000

Personally speaking, I get a shock response in the short term – elevated heartrate, panickedly closing the window and such, then for the next half hour or so I’m paranoid about spiders around me. IRL, spiders have literally made me involuntarily run away.

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By: John

John — Thu, 20 Jun 2013 16:59:40 +0000

Supposedly marijuana is a pretty effective treatment for cancer.

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By: Jack

Jack — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 12:52:45 +0000

“Are there actual respectable biologists (ie capable of getting themselves published) who will perform experiments for profit for what a private citizen would be able/willing to pay?”

I’m really not sure, but my impression is that, in general, it’s hard to turn money into reputable scientific experiments, but most cancer research consists of “hey, we found this in a toad toe, does it do anything interesting?” and if you were willing to sink the cost of a mortgage into it, you could get a reasonable “this works better than anything else in test tubes, someone stump up funding for animal testing” results.

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By: jurko

jurko — Sun, 16 Jun 2013 10:17:51 +0000

And then be imprisoned for unlawful medical practice.

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By: Gareth Rees

Gareth Rees — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 12:50:11 +0000

It’s rhetoric, innit? Attacking your opponents’ character is, alas, much more effective than attacking their argument. (You might enjoy notes on rhetoric if you’re not already familiar with it.)

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By: Tom Womack

Tom Womack — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 12:17:20 +0000

I think that the cancer treatment story is that a large number of civilians were exposed to mustard gas during an air raid in 1943 in Bari; doctors looking at blood samples from the survivors saw that the mustard-gas had selectively killed lymphocytes; so they tried treating patients with Hodgkin’s disease (a cancer involving proliferating lymphocytes) with mustard-gas and found that it worked.

One more level of indirection.

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By: von Kalifornen

von Kalifornen — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 23:05:08 +0000

Yes. By the way, you might what to answer the door. THere’s an armored personell carrier and a really scared looking recovery team outside.

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By: Scott Alexander

Scott Alexander — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 21:49:11 +0000

This is kind of a silly argument, but:

1. Are there actual respectable biologists (ie capable of getting themselves published) who will perform experiments for profit for what a private citizen would be able/willing to pay?

2. It’s kind of a truism that every day people discover something else that destroys cancer cells in a petri dish. Are these claims considered sufficiently interesting that you think a pharma company would invest just based on one article from the sort of biologist who would work for pay claiming that this chemical did so too?

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